GSW Worldwide - Medical Marketing and Media

Agencies
GSW
Worldwide
Tweaking a business strategy while
keeping core values consistent
“GSW is
more than
willing to
press the
boundaries
of what
it sees as
possible”
—Joe Daley
84 MM&M x JULY 2012 x mmm-online.com
GSW Worldwide has, in many ways, reached
the dawn of a new era. Recent months have
seen a change of leadership on both sides
of the pond, following the departures of both Phil
Deschamps, who had been president and CEO for 13
years, and European president Angela Lieder.
And sadly, towards the end of 2011, the Westerville,
OH-based shop lost one of its beloved founders when
Bob Gerbig passed away, aged 66.
GSW is tweaking its business strategy, too, with a
push to diversify its client base, extend its strategic
capabilities and collaborate more with its inVentiv
Health siblings.
Nevertheless, the agency’s identity and its core values
remain very much intact.
“GSW continues to be what it has been historically…
namely, a highly entrepreneurial organization that is
more than willing to press the boundaries of what it
sees as possible,” asserts Joe Daley, who recently took
the reins as president and CEO. “No matter what our
ownership construct happens to be, that spirit remains
alive and very much at the core of who we are.”
Daley says GSW is now leveraging the inVentiv
Health family and infrastructure “in a more organized”
way to buttress its presence outside the US major
markets. “That’s proven to create some important
momentum,” he says, “particularly in Europe, where it’s
common for advertising spend to be a lower percent of
overall commercial spend, and where medical education
and PR are stronger components of spend.”
As the leading agency of the inVentiv family, GSW
continues to be at the forefront of driving collaboration
and new possibilities with its siblings, says Daley, citing
important projects in the area of patient engagement
and compliance.
So how well is GSW performing? While declining
to give year-on-year numbers, Daley reports a 10%-
11% compounded annual growth over the past three
years and adds that the agency has “accomplished
quite a bit on the client front in the spirit of new wins,
new therapeutic categories and different kinds of
organizations.”
In 2011, GSW won 22 new pieces of business from
10 clients. A particularly pleasing win for Daley was
new client Mylan, which had consolidated from more
than 20 agencies to just one.
“They’re an exciting organization that is not just
in the generic space, but also in the branded space,
and they’re also extremely active in the reinvention
of their own brand,” he notes. “That partnership is
incredibly diverse for us. We’re operating at the master
brand level, we’re operating behind their branded
products and we’re operating with them in markets
around the world.”
An important recent win in Daley’s eyes was Biogen
in the MS space. “They have an incredibly exciting asset
in the pipeline—it’s an oral therapy that promises to
offer an important improvement for patients living
with MS,” he says.
What began as a professional assignment has since
migrated to encompass consumer too. “We’re finding,
not just from a purely revenue perspective but from
a brand creation perspective, that the best place for a
manufacturer to be is with that single partner connecting
all of the customer stakeholders together.”
Bruce Rooke, chief creative officer at GSW Worldwide,
explains the philosophy. “We’ve always been
strong believers that a [treatment] decision is not
made in isolation,” he says. “What happens is that a
dialogue takes place, so it’s more about equipping
[both doctor and patient] with the right tools, so that
each can complete the sentence in that examination
room. And it’s easier to do that when you have both
[professional and consumer work].”
Rooke says it’s often about making clients understand
that, firstly, physicians are consumers, too, and
so you need so reach them outside of the usual HCP
channels; and second, that by doing this, you will benefit
the corporate brand.
Similarly, at the end of 2011, GSW picked up the consumer
work for Lilly’s Humalog, which Daley describes
as “an important evolution in that relationship.”

Yet another consumer win saw the agency pick up
DTC for Stryker’s knee replacement products. Daley
just saw the first commercial air on TV and is very
pleased with what he saw. “It’s not just the creative
work that grabs you, it’s really the insight,” he says.
“This is a product that’s been around and not blowing
the doors off, so we came in with a new insight and
renamed it. We led off with that. It’s been everything
from the strategic insight all the way up to re-launching
it, and very effectively so.”
Rooke is especially proud of a series of short films
for Lilly Oncology. The first, called “The Moment,”
was released in April and is a powerful and emotional
depiction of a patient seeing his oncologist for the
first time. “Without a narrator, without an announcer
and without dialogue, it stops right at that moment of
diagnosis and decision,” he says. “That’s really where
Lilly Oncology steps in with everything they do.”
The silent films will target only healthcare profes-
“The Moment,” a short film made for Lilly Oncology
(opposite) and an ad for Humalog (above)
sionals for now, but again, Rooke hopes the work will
crossover into the consumer space.
Another of his creative picks is the awareness effort
GSW did for the National Bone Health Alliance
(NBHA). “The issue they brought to us was that we
have all of these people who are 50 and older, breaking
their arms or breaking their hips or breaking their
wrists,” he explains. “But what happens is they get it
set in an ER and go home none the smarter. They
don’t realize that bone density is probably the main
issue in a majority of these situations, so we need to
wake people up to that fact.”
While the campaign included some print ads, the
main event was… well, an event. In order to convey
the huge number of breaks per day caused by bone
density, GSW designed and built Cast Mountain—a
gigantic installation made out of hundreds of casts—
and erected it at various medical conventions around
the country. Of course, having already been a hit with
the client, Rooke is hoping that Cast Mountain will
be extended into the consumer arena. “It’s an ongoing
process,” he says. “But the clients know that the
message really has to get to consumers.”
The nature of some of the work described above
suggests a shift to an increasingly varied and innova-
AT THE HELM
Joe Daley, president
and CEO
PERFORMANCE
Agency has had compounded
annual growth
of 10%–11% over the
past three years
Won 22 new pieces
of business from 10
clients in 2011
HIGHLIGHTS
New leadership in both
Europe and the US
An important recent
win from Biogen for
an oral therapy for
patients living with MS
Made a shift to an
increasingly varied and
innovative workload
Picked up consumer
work for Lilly’s Humalog,
an “important
evolution” in GSW’s
relationship with Lilly
Put together an awareness
campaign for the
National Bone Health
Alliance
Produced a series of
short films targeted at
HCPs for Lilly Oncology
CHALLENGES
Diversifying the
agency’s client base,
extending its strategic
capabilities and collaborating
more with
inVentiv siblings
For contact details, service
offerings and client
roster, see Agency A-to-Z,
beginning on page 181
tive workload, with greater integration between media
channels and between HCP and consumer audiences.
Does this mean that clients are getting more comfortable
with new ideas and approaches?
“Well, you still have to create a pretty good sales
argument,” says Rooke. “You need to show that it’s
increasing the business they’re responsible for, and not
just that it’s a neat thing to do. I think clients want to
go to these places, but they just haven’t seen it done
in the healthcare space, so we’re continuing to amass
case studies.”
Work for the cystic fibrosis treatment Cayston
(top) and the online tool Amplifier
Daley sees clients beginning to embrace the possibility
of experimentation enabled through technology.
“Different organizations have either established
innovation groups—or they’re allowing us to bring
our innovation group in and pilot and beta test—with
a much higher frequency than we saw two or three
years ago.”
Rooke says that the decision two years ago to dissolve
GSW’s digital division, and instead give each
brand team digital expertise, leaves the agency wellpositioned
for the changes ahead.
“The old idea that if you build a statue to the brand,
then they’ll come… that no longer happens,” he says.
“So brands now have to follow consumers instead of
consumers following brand, and we’re seeing really
great opportunities for brand-driven products and
programs.” —James Chase
mmm-online.com x JULY 2012 x MM&M 85